Drollene P. Brown

Essayist, columnist, author, ghostwriter, editor, political activist—all those terms could describe what Drollene P. Brown is, but any one of them alone doesn’t quite make it. Nor do they complete the picture when taken all together. Heart, passion and joy are missing among those words, and heart, passion and joy are at the core of Drollene Plattner Brown.

Born in 1939 to Wilson and Evelyn McClure Plattner of St. Albans, West Virginia, Drollene began practicing making loops on lined paper at the age of five so she’d be ready when she learned to write. Three years later she was writing essays—one of them her own theory of relativity, having to do with the statement, “How big you are!” comparing herself with the size of an older friend.

As editor of the St. Albans High School newspaper, The Simmerings, she made history with two classmates, Carol Hopkins and Kay Holt, as the first students ever to participate in the school’s journalism program for two years. Thus began a tradition for students at the school with a deep interest in print communication: take the senior class as juniors; run the paper as seniors. Drollene’s career veered toward sociology after she worked for two years on the newspaper at Ouachita Baptist College, from which she was graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in religion and sociology.

Sociology took her to researching and college teaching, which she seized with a passion to change lives and broaden horizons, but when time and students’ attitudes dimmed that shining goal, she turned back to her first love, the written word. While working as vice president of A.J. Brown, Inc., her husband’s airline consulting firm, she began her professional writing career, first composing columns and book reviews for The Boca Raton News, and then writing biographies for children.

Sybil Rides For Independence (Albert Whitman, 1985) was chosen “Children’s Book of the Year” by the Child Study Association of America. In 1988 Merrill purchased the rights for use in its Skilltext Series “Focus on Reading,” Level II. In 1989, Simon Schuster purchased rights for use in Sliver, Burdett & Ginn’s Beyond the Horizon. Drollene’s second book, Belva Lockwood Wins Her Case (Albert Whitman, 1987) was chosen as “Best Book of the Year” by the Wisconsin Cooperative Children’s Book Center.

Abe Goldman contacted Drollene and begged her to write a novel for him based on his experience with his wife’s Alzheimer’s disease and the way it had changed his life. He sent her seven steno notebook pages, each with one sentence scrawled across it. Thus was born Drollene’s third book, Holding On To Ettie (Distinctive, 1990), which was selected by The Library of Congress for converting to Braille and audio tape for the blind and handicapped. Goldman insisted that she be given ghostwriter credit on the front of the book.

There followed a stint at Distinctive Publishing in Pompano Beach, Florida, where Drollene honed her skills as an editor. When she moved to Morriston, Florida, in 1994, she established her own publishing house, RitAmelia Press (named after her two grandmothers, Rita and Amelia), and promptly wrote a book that had long been simmering: Thomas and Launia, Their Ancestors and Descendants: A History of One Branch of the Lincoln County, West Virginia, McClures. She printed it by subscription from McClure cousins, many of them having contributed their family stories for the book.

During the mid-1990s Drollene also established herself as an editor. Added to the long list of books she had edited while at Distinctive, she began to accumulate a stable of her own authors, some of them coming back repeatedly. She published a few under her own RitAmelia imprint, but Drollene continued to write her own books. A Daughter Remembers Wilson William Plattner (1999) had been bubbling on the back burner since Wilson Plattner’s death in 1987, and she was relieved to finally get it written.

Drollene’s sixth tome is a large coffee table book commissioned by Southern Heritage Press. Based on her work writing the narrative for the collectible sponsored by The Friends of the Williston Public Library, Williston: Crossroads of Florida (2007), publisher Byron Kennedy asked Drollene to write a history of Levy County, Florida. Mixing contributed family stories with research into various archives, she wrote Levy County: Voices from the Past (2008). It has proved popular among aficionados of beautiful books and history buffs in the area

The final book, A Dragon’s Life: St. Albans High School, W.Va., Class of 1957, had also been brewing for a while. The author awarded it the last ISBN of the log she had purchased for RitAmelia in 1994, and with that book in 2012, she put her press to bed. That finish did not stop her work as an editor. Viewing her work as more than editing, she also teaches her clients how to make their work better while keeping their individual style and vision. Drollene has become a writing guru to young and old, and her clients tell her she can’t quit. During the years 1990-2014, she edited 70 books that were eventually published.

Having her own business gives Drollene the time to do more public service work than she was able to do when she was younger. With friend Babs Hale, Drollene co-founded Citizens for an Engaged Electorate (CEE). The group membership crosses party lines and is primarily progressive, but it has joined conservative organizations on such issues as working to legalize the right of Florida citizens to generate their own solar power and share it with neighbors without paying penalties to utility companies. Because CEE is small, the group joins other organizations in their established causes. One successful project was The Florida Water and Land Legacy’s amendment proposal to get adequate funding for maintenance and acquisition of state water and land. Other ongoing endeavors CEE has joined are: Move to Amend (www.movetoamend.org) , which seeks an amendment to the U.S. Constitution stating money is not speech and corporations are not people; the Florida Food & Water Watch project to get GMO labeling; a broad network of organizations working to save the U.S. Postal Service, principally by repealing the 2006 law that requires the USPS to fund retirement benefits 75 years into the future; and the ACLU effort to restore citizenship to non-violent felons who have done their time. In addition, CEE is a third party registrar authorized to register voters.

Another group in which Drollene participates is The Life Raft, an advocacy and support group for caregivers of people with dementia. Her interest in this cause developed when her husband, Al, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Although he passed away on January 24, 2018, she retains her devotion to the mission remains. Al and Drollene were married for 36 years.

After remaining for an additional year on the 5-acre property in Morriston, Florida, on which she had lived for 25 years with Al and her sister, Sharon Reynolds, Drollene decided to sell. In August 2019, shortly before her 80th birthday, she moved to a rental home in Ocala, Florida, with her son, Mark, and her sister. The entire family serves at the pleasure of two cats, solid black Phoebe and gray-and-white tuxedo Samson, and a Chihuahua/terrier mix named Crockett. The cats have adjusted to ignoring the dog and being confined to the house after 11 years of roaming the old neighborhood.

Drollene enjoys reading fiction, and much to her surprise—because she thought she’d miss turning actual paper pages—she loves reading her tablet, a gift from her daughter and son-in-law, Shauna and Berto Diaz. She carries it wherever she goes and feels as though she’s carrying a library around with her. Drollene loves a good story, even if the punctuation, spelling and syntax are a mess. When that happens she moans over the lack of a good editor for the book and just keeps reading, always curious about what will happen next. That curiosity keeps her going during bleak times in real life, too. No matter how tough matters seem at any given moment, she always wonders, What’s next? She seeks the joy in every day.

Honors

2012-13 Listed in Worldwide Who’s Who of Executives, Professionals and Entrepreneurs,

By Global Branding and Networking

1995 Listed in Contemporary Authors New Revision Series, by Gale Research, Inc.

1990 Listed in Who’s Who in United States Freelance Journalism, by Data One, Inc.

1988, ’89 Listed in Something about the Author, by Gale Research Company

1988, ’89 Listed in Who’s Who in U.S. Writers, Editors and Poets, by December Press

1977 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow, summer seminar on “The

Sociological and Psychological Implications of Modern Literature,” led by

Robert Wilson, University of North Carolina, Chapel. Hill

1965 Member, Kappa Delta Pi, national honor society in education, University of

Texas, Austin

1963 Hogg Foundation Fellow, University of Texas

1962-64 National Institute of Mental Health Fellow, University of Texas, Austin

1961 University Fellow, University of Texas, Austin

1961 Summa cum Laude Graduate, Ouachita Baptist College

1960 Member, Alpha Chi, national honor society, Ouachita Baptist College

1960 Listed in Who’s Who in American Colleges and Universities

1957 Summa cum Laude graduate, St. Albans High School, St. Albans, West Virginia